Midway Green Spirit Community Garden is open for Community Garden Day on 8/11

On Saturday, August 11, 2012 community gardens across the State of Minnesota will celebrate Community Garden Day, a statewide community garden open house . On this day, 60 participating community gardens will host events in their garden that are free and open to the public.

In the Midway,  Horton Park Community Gardens & Midway Green Spirit Community Garden BOTH  will be hosting events.  See Horton's schedule here (including an 11:30 guided tree tour) 

Here is the schedule for Midway Green Spirit Community Garden:

The garden will be open from 12-3 pm and visitors can do our Show and Tell Activity at their own pace, meandering through the garden to read what our gardeners have learned and what makes them proud!  

~1 pm Community Circle: One of our gardeners will talk about the volunteer effort to grow and donate food to a local food pantry. 

~1:15 pm Growing Peppers for Seasoning: Another gardener has been growing peppers for 10+ years and has developed his own method for preparing the peppers to make spice blends.

~1:30 pm Beehive Demonstration:  One of our bee-keepers will talk about caring for the beehives at Green Spirit. 

The purpose of Community Garden Day is to provide an opportunity for the public to learn more about these community spaces directly from the people who steward them and the events will be as unique as the gardens in which they are located.

Tree Tour at Horton Park Arboretum on Community Garden Day 8/11

Horton Park Community Native Plant Gardens to take part in Community Garden Day 2012!

You are invited to visit Horton Park on Sunday, August 11th, as part of the Twin Cities wide Community Garden Day.  Come and enjoy free refreshments, music, and tours of the gardens and arboretum.  You will get to see the latest blooms and butterflies in the gardens and may even get a chance pitch in!  

Event Time: 11:30-2pm (tree tour at 11:30)

Street Address: 1383 Minnehaha Ave W, St. Paul

Also note: Midway Greenspirit Garden is also open from 11am-3pm! Make a plan to traverse Hamline Ave in the Midway to reach both gardens.  At Greenspirit, you will find an interactive garden show-and-tell  where gardeners have provided reflection on their plots and experience and demos on their foodshelf donations, beehive and growing peppers.  See this link for details.

Arboretum Tour
Over 60 new trees were planted in the park at an Arbor Day event this year by the city and the Friends of Horton Park to greatly expand the park's role as an arboretum.  Come at 11:30 to get a tree tour hosted by a St. Paul forester. It's a great way to learn about trees that do well in our area.

 Garden Tour
The neighborhood group Friends of Horton Park maintains the community native plant gardens at Horton Park.  We have native oak savanna, shade, and prairie gardens planted and maintained by volunteers with the support of the St. Paul Parks Department.  Our gardens provide a wonderful place to learn about gardening with plants native to Minnesota, which are often beautiful, easy to maintain, and provide nectar and seeds for native insects and birds.  Garden tours will be offered as requested between noon and 2 pm.

About The Friends of Horton Park
The Friends of Horton Park maintains the Native Plant Gardens at Horton Park.  We have native oak savanna, shade, and prairie gardens planted by volunteers with the support of the St. Paul Parks Department and neighborhood volunteers. Our gardens are a great place to learn about gardening with plants native to Minnesota, which are often beautiful, easy to maintain, and provide nectar and seeds for native insects and birds.

For More Info: hortonpark @ gmail.com

Horton Park Gardening Schedule 2012 & Polyphemus sighting

It's been an eventful spring at Horton Park, starting with the enormously successful tree planting event for Arbor Day in April, adding wood chips to the garden edges by St. Paul City Forestry staff & donations from the Friend's School Plant Sale in May, and a well-attended tour of the gardens by the Wild Ones in early June.  Wild Ones is a wonderful group that promotes the use of native plants and luckily, the group saw two big beautiful Polyphemus moths in the oak savanna garden during the tour! 

Below is the schedule for the rest of the summer. We'll send out notices if there are any changes.

All the best,
Hannah, Steph and Paul

Summer 2012 Horton Park Gardening Schedule

• Sunday, June 10, 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm
• Sunday, July 8, 12:00 to 2:00 pm
• Saturday, August 11, 11:30 to 2:00 pm (Community Garden Day)
• Sunday, September 9, 12:00 to 2:00 pm
• Sunday, October 14, 12:00 to 2:00 pm

Central Corridor bike tour, community greening, community herbarium all converging at Horton Park on Oct 16th

The Hamline Midway community gardeners and residents will be greeting folks from The Central Corridor Roadside Attraction Bicycle Tour at their stop at Horton Park on Sunday Octover 16th at 10:00 am. The visit will be brief, but will give the neighborhood a chance to convey why we are involved in gardening & greening efforts, and what our hopes/dreams are for the future of plants and people along the Central Corridor. The stop would be about 15-30 minutes. The bike tour-goers will stop at Horton  to hear about a vision for the future for Horton Park, for the surrounding neighborhood(s), and/or for our urban environment generally speaking. Thinking big, this could include ideas around reviving the arboretum/more education efforts about plants? More/larger community gardens? A community farm/orchard? More citizen science projects in the neighborhoods?

We will share some the story of Horton Park: how/why it was created, the plants that are there and efforts that are already underway to share information about these plants with people who visit, it's "invisible" or "sleepy" presence. It is also an opportunity to think big and riff on hopes and dreams.

Works Progress will be playing host too and will highlight possible roles for collaborative artists in the process of dreaming a future for plants and people. They are hoping to launch a public art project next year that would engage a broad array of Twin Cities residents in this conversation by enlisting them to help collect and press plants for a Community Herbarium. Sunday attendees will get to trial the first efforts around the community herbarium where stories will accompany the pressed plants. Visitors can take part in an activity pressing some plants from Horton Park.

Gardening Books for Winter Reading & Inspiration 2011

These Books were recommended by Hamline Midway neighbors and community gardeners who attended the 'All Community Gardeners Potluck' at Horton Park on September 25, 2011.

• "Prairie Style Gardens" Lynn M. Steiner

• "Abundantly Wild" Terese Maroon

• "Just Weeds: History, Myths, and Uses" Pamela Jones

• "Gardening with Prairie Plants" Sally Wasowski

• "Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land" Kurt Timmermeister

• "Landscaping with Native Plants of Minnesota" Lynn M. Steiner

• "Healing Gardens" Romy Rawlings

• "Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer" Novella Carpenter

• "The Feast Nearby: How I Lost My Job, Buried a Marriage, and Found My Way by Keeping Chickens, Foraging, Preserving, Bartering, and Eating Locally (All on $40 a Week)" Robin Mather

The Green Alley work day pilot yields tremendous outcomes!

The thick of the alley work event

Over 30 volunteers turned out for our alley clean-up on Saturday Sept. 24th! The crew pulled weeds, pulled trees, disposed of garbage, mulched, and planted!  Many thank-you's go out to neighbors, Hamline-Midway Environmental Group (HMEG) members, Hamline Midway Coalition's Community Building Committee (CBC),  and our Master Gardener Diane Fraser.  The alley was transformed when trash-filled, overgrown, and untidy spaces were cleaned up and planted. Plus, some block residents connected for the first time while others strengthened their relationships throughout the process. Better neighbor connections and well-kept spaces can help prevent crime such as illegal dumping, graffiti, and residential burglaries. The vision of the project was to support residents who want to improve their alleys for water quality, safety, food production, and aesthetics. This block on Charles Ave between Griggs and Syndicate got 20 property owners on board with a green alley pilot project, and in exchange, received organizing help and volunteer assistance for a Green Alley Work Day from the CBC and HMEG. One alley resident and work day volunteer expounded on the benefits of the event:

"Many alley [spaces] that looked derelict now look clean and tended-to. I met neighbors I'd never spoken with before, and had great conversations with residents I almost never see. [Plus] I got to use a weed wrench!" Another volunteer said, "Extreme Alley Makeover should be the name of this program - beautiful transformations of neglected space!"

Dozens of block residents turned out only to be greeted by many volunteers from the greater neighborhood who were there just to lend a hand for the day. HMEG and the Southeast Como Improvement Association lent a large supply of tools that included a Weed Wrench.  There was a second, and larger, Weed Wrench provided by Midway neighbor Chad from the U of MN.   Our Master Gardener, Diane, was an inspiration and energetic leader that would not accept an unfinished job.  Further, she lent her truck that was used to rip out stumps of weed trees (this activity went on for about 5 solid hours).  The crew hauled 10 truckloads of weeds and brush to the compost site, and 1 truckload to the Ward 4 Clean-up day (concurrent timing was all part of the plan). Lots of transplant daylilies and hostas came from area yards, and a nice batch of natives plants came from Horton Park community gardeners and friends from the University of MN.  Short native plants will hopefully colonize some of the cleared spaces, and provide food for native pollinators.  

Once the majority of the hard work was done, the group came together for a chili feed potluck.  A perfect accent to the productive day.

See the photos of the work event here.
Some before & after shots are in this album.

Residents along the alley are saying that it looks great and they are very thankful. They recognize many benefits from this type of greening, including community building, crime prevention, and beautification.

Acknowledgment goes to Faith Krogstad for contributing to this article.

Midway All-Community Garden Potluck & Books on Sept 25th

You are invited to the “Hamline Midway Community Garden Potluck” at Horton Park on Sunday, September 25 at 12:00 p.m. This invitation extends to ALL fellow HM community gardeners, supporters, interested friends, family members, and neighbors, to make this a CELEBRATION of neighborhood community gardening!

In addition to enjoying lunch in the park, we will also have the opportunity to view a short Public Art St. Paul video that highlights Hamline Midway community gardens! The footage for this video was taken during a gathering this summer at Groundswell where a number of community gardeners from the Midway described gardening together, the gardens themselves and the important placemaking roles of these spaces. The staff from Public Art St. Paul synthesized our comments and overlaid them with video they shot in the gardens.

Further, we are inviting attendees to the potluck to bring a new or favorite gardening book! Soon we will be under a blanket of snow, and garden inspiration will be a welcomed antidote. After perusing each other's titles at the potluck, we will have new book wish-lists ready for the upcoming dark and cold nights.

On the 25th, bring along any kind of food that you would like to share, your own place setting to eat from, and of course a book! Horton Park is located between Minnehaha and Englewood Avenues, and between Hamline and Albert Avenues. Look for us at the picnic tables in the middle of the park. We look forward to seeing you and celebrating the fruits of our labor.

*Note - the Hamline Thomas Community Garden potluck for September 18 has morphed into this event and will NOT be held on the 18th - See you at Horton on the 25th!

Horton Park gardening this Friday!

We are holding our first gardening day at Horton Park this Friday, April 29th, from 10:00 am to noon, a different day than usual because of all the weekend spring holidays this year. We will be raking leaves, clipping dried vegetation from last year, and digging weeds. If you can bring clippers, rakes, a wheelbarrow, and/or your favorite digging tool, please do - otherwise just show up. We should be seeing the earliest spring blooms in the gardens - bloodroot, pussytoes, and prairie smoke will likely be visible. Please join us if you can - it may be the only sunny day this week!

Hamline Midway Bugs n' Bikes Community Garden Tour

Spend the day biking between Hamline Midway gardens, participating in activities, eating wonderful food, and having a great time at the:

Hamline Midway Bugs n' Bikes Community Garden Tour Saturday, August 21st, 10 am – 2 pm

Part of the Gardening Matters “Parade of Community Gardens”


Here is the list of the SIX community gardens participating in Hamline Midway neighborhood and the exciting activities and events each site is planning. This day will celebrate these sites and the people who volunteer to make them happen. Lots of fun to be had right in the Midway!

Pump up those bike tires and chart your course:


41. Snelling Planters
755 Snelling Ave N
::Bug hat activity
::Composting information/demonstrations
::Sidewalk sale & free popcorn at Hamline Hardware

at Mosaic on a Stick
595 Snelling Avenue N
::Free community mosaic on a stick project 12-2pm

42. SPROUT Garden
1514 W Englewood Ave
::Bike check-ups, tune-ups, and education with Terri from Now Bikes and Fitness
::Bike Activity with Scott and Carrie from the Hamline Church
::Crafting project for kids!

43. Maxine Smith Rain Garden
Hamline Church-W Minnehaha Ave & N Simpson St.
::Rain garden information
::Capitol Region Watershed District staff present to answer questions on managing rain water runoff
::Face painting and cargo bike demonstration.

44. Midway GreenSpirit
W Pierce Butler Route & Hamline Ave N
::Check out the new orchard!
::Eat honey sweetened treats
::Ask Master Gardeners and beekeepers everything you ever wanted to know
::Beehive Demo at 1 pm; kids activities

45. Horton Park Gardens
W Minnehaha Ave & Hamline Ave N
::View beautiful native plant gardens
::Get questions about tree growing & emerald ash borer answered by experts
::Learn about the neighborhood tree inventory and how to get a free or low cost tree for your yard
::Refreshments and activities

46. Hamline Thomas Garden
Hamline Ave N & W Thomas Ave
::Information on monarch butterflies
::Learn the history of the garden – from decay to beauty!
::Come at 1:00 for a 15 minute lively and informative stuffed animal show by playwright, ::performer, and teacher Leslye Orr of Dreamland Arts.


Note: the numbers on the map correspond to the numbers above, which correspond to the listings posted at www.gardeningmatters.org, which will correspond to the bright orange directional signs you will see on the Parade day. A poster/flier for the Bugs n' Bike Tour for printing can be found here.

This map can also be accessed online at Google Maps

Six Hamline-Midway Community Gardens participating in the 5th Annual Parade of Community Gardens!

Bike, walk, run, skate, drive if need be to explore and celebrate a variety of green spaces and the bugs that help them grow on the Hamline-Midway Bugs n’ Bikes Community Garden Tour! Saturday, August 21 10am-2pm, six Hamline-Midway community gardens will offer fun, educational, and creative activities and treats for all ages as part of the 5th annual Parade of Community Gardens. Stop by any location to start your tour and pick up a map and schedule of events. Locations include:

• Hamline-Thomas Community Garden at Hamline and Thomas Avenues
• Hamline United Methodist Church at 1514 Englewood Ave
• SPROUTS Community Gardens at 1514 Englewood Ave
• Horton Park at Minnehaha and Hamline Avenues
• Midway GreenSpirit Community Garden off of Pierce Butler between Hamline Avenue and Albert Street
• Snelling Avenue Planters at Hamline Hardware at 755 Snelling Ave N

For further information or to get involved with these Midway garden sites and their events, please email junelune1@gmail.com.

The importance of native pollinators

The importance of native pollinators as posted on MidPoint Green

The Midway community gardens are hatching a plan for the August event called the Parade of Community gardens on 8/21/2010. Its too soon to let you know about all the fun details, but it will involve six Midway community garden sites, and will give visitors a peek at pollinators. Even in our urban area, pollinators are vital. In this photo, my Leadplant is being visited by bees. at the Midway Greenspirit garden, the beehive there are increasing yields of tomatoes, peppers, blueberries, strawberries, , raspberries, apples, melons, sunflowers, pumpkins, plums, and squash both in the garden and for miles around. Native pollinators can be even more efficient at the job, such as bumblebees increasing yields even more. The Xerces Society is an organization looking into the importance of invertebrates. Below is some quality information from Xerces on how to encourage native pollinators which were developed for roadsides. While a small residential urban yard may need to be selective from this list of practices, most are applicable for our cities too. I see it in my own yard and in my community gardens regularly. Xerces research show that using native plants in a landscape can double the number of bee counts and increase the types of bees found there by 35%. So you want to get the most out of your food production gardens? Plant for the bees too!


From Xerces:

Eighty-seven of the world’s 124 most commonly cultivated crops are insect/animal pollinated. Between 60 to 80% of the world’s 250,000 flowering plants depend on animals for pollination.
In the United States, the National Research Council (2007) reported noteworthy losses of both managed and wild pollinators. Habitat loss, pesticide use, diseases, parasites, and the spread of invasive species are the major causes of pollinator decline. Threats to pollinator communities affect not only pollinators themselves but also natural ecosystems and agricultural productivity.


Key design factors & practices to enhance flower diversity for bee habitat around farms, gardens or roadsides include:

Planting choices
1) Use native wildflowers and grasses, with high densities of flowers.
2) Plant a minimum of 3 blooming plant species during each season.
3) Aim for season-long blooming plants, early and late season blooming plants are especially important.
4) Plant a range of wildflowers of varying colors and shapes. Bees mainly visit blue, white, yellow, and purple flowers.
5) Plant flowers in single species clumps for best results.

Providing Nest Sites
6) Warm season, clump-forming grasses provide bumble bee nest sites.
7) Have a mix of forbs and shrubs.
8) Don’t mow or hay entire grassy meadows or roadsides, leave some for pollinators.
9) Conserve habitat for rabbit burrows and groundhog burrows for bee nesting sites.
10) Reduce tillage and avoid plastic sheeting for ground nesting bees.

Reducing the Impact of Mowing and Spraying
11) Intensive mowing or grazing impacts abundance of bees.
12) Avoid or minimize the use of insecticides.

Time to garden this weekend at Horton

Time to garden this weekend at Horton. Paul and Steph will be poking around our plants, sniffing out undesirables and planting a few grass and shade plant donations from the Friends School Plant Sale. Our butterfly weed may be making an appearance along with harebells and bedstraw. We welcome you to join us. Tools, gloves and light refreshments will be on hand as usual.

Second Sunday at Horton Park

Sun, June 13, 12pm – 2pm

Further, we are excited to preview a second June session, this time with a little twist! We are hosting a Happy Hour time at a midway backyard prairie that will occur after spreading woodchip around our park gardens. Community gardening isn't just about the plants! The date is Friday June 25th, in the early evening. We will send more details as the date approaches, but please make note.

Note on the picture: Paul is being helped by a Girl Scout Daisy as they root out weeds during the May session at Horton Park. The Daisy's attended the May session at Horton and had a great time weeding, watering, clipping and planting! We planted a few large flowered beardtongue and saw columbine, prairie smoke, pussytoes, downy violet and wild phlox in bloom.

Snelling Avenue Planters to get colorful on Thursday morning

Are you available on Thursday morning? If so, come join the crew to get the Snelling Avenue planters filled with plants donated by Hamline University. Snelling Avenue businesses and neighbor volunteers annually tend the planters. Hamline also pays for a water truck from the city. SPARC supports the planting too by getting the word out to folks on the avenue. Its a team effort to get this small placemaking effort under way. Between the community mosaics (HMC, Mosaic on a Stick), and the colorful annuals, the award winning planters are a visible connection to the Hamline Midway neighborhood for us and the over 40,000 vehicles per day that pass them.

Consider helping on planting day! Bring gloves, any trowels, water containers and wagon/wheelbarrows you may have.

Snelling Ave. Planter Planting

Thu, May 20. 11:00 am

Where	Hamline park

Mother's Day (5/9) at Horton Park

Please join us on Mother's Day (5/9) at Horton Park for some native wildflower gardening. The gardens look terrific following our early April cleanup, but the weeds are now gaining due to the unseasonably warm weather. We would love to have your help in rooting them out and helping the natives to flourish. We'll have treats to share and will be happy to teach you to identify the native plants. As always, bring your favorite gardening tools (some provided too), and join your neighbors for as little time or as much as you would like! We will be there from noon to 2:00 pm.

The garden's email list can be found here: http://groups.google.com/group/hortonpark and garden dates are posted on the HMEG calendar http://tinyurl.com/HMEGcalendar

Make an impact alongside the Hamline Thomas community gardeners: May volunteers needed

The garden at the Super USA on Hamline and Thomas is trying something a little different this year - instead of a big planting extravaganza, we've chosen three spring dates to meet in the garden for shorter time periods to add plants and seeds as they become available. Here are the dates and times:

• Wednesday, April 28th, 5:30 pm
• Wednesday, May 12th, 5:30 pm
• Thursday, May 27th, 5:30 pm

The garden has more and more perennials returning each year, including the bulbs planted by Peter last year, so we won't need to add as many plants. However, let us know if you have some divisions from your garden that are compatible with the full sun and the warm color scheme of red, yellow, orange with some white.

These dates are added to the HMEG calendar. We hope you can attend and lend a hand. This corner was transformed a few years ago through the hard work of community members and volunteers continue to be important to retain the positive impacts of the place-making achievements. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact me. Thanks, and hope to see you in the garden!

Hannah Texler
hortonpark at gmail dot com

Ramsey County Master Gardeners supporting Midway and Frogtown neighborhoods

This is a moment to shout out to Ramsey County Master Gardeners (RCMG) in the Midway. So many Midway and Frogtown garden projects are nicely highlighted in the RCMG year end report from 2009. I particularly want to shine a light on Diane's work. She is successfully working hard within this organization to bring in intern Master Gardeners from diverse backgrounds. She also takes her Master Gardening service time to our urban neighborhoods, augmenting community efforts in growing their own food. She would want you to check out another organization she works for called "Growing Food and Justice for All".

Here is that Master Gardener 2009 report (pdf). In it you will find summaries of Hamline Midway and Frogtown community garden projects including Aurora-St. Anthony Peace Garden, Horton Park Community Garden, Snelling Avenue Planter Project, Frogtown Gardeners, Frogtown Orchard Project. Also supported and not mentioned are projects at Galtier Elementary, Hamline High Rise, LEAP Academy, HUMC Rain Gardens, and Midway Green Spirit Garden.

Master Gardeners are a well used resource in our St. Paul neighborhoods. Many thanks to their members!

New feature: What's happening in the Horton Park community gardens?

Remember to join us in the Horton Park community gardens tomorrow, Saturday, from 9:00 to 11:00 am when we will be raking and clipping, cleaning up the gardens to get ready for spring! I visited the gardens today, and this early spring is showing itself in the park. In the prairie garden on Hamline and Minnehaha, the prairie smoke is in bloom, and the pussytoes have flower buds. In our shade garden, the bloodroot and wild ginger have flowers.

Featured plant of the month: wild ginger (Asarum canadense)
If you have never taken the time to get down on your knees and look at wild ginger flowers, you've missed a treat. Wild ginger is in the Aristolochiaceae, or birthwort, family. The most visible part of the flowers is the elongated sepals - there are 3 of them, spreading and sometimes twisted, and colored a rich dark red. The flowers grow close to the ground, where they are pollinated by beetles. The plants are easily identifiable by the thick, hairy, heart-shaped leaves. Wild ginger spreads easily by rhizomes (which are stems that creep along the ground). The rhizomes smell a bit like ginger, though the plants are not related to the ginger we buy in the store. It is possible to make a candy or spice from the rhizomes of wild ginger by cutting them into short sections, boiling them for an hour, then simmering them in a sugar syrup for 20 minutes, then separating them and drying them. (But please don't dig up the plants in the garden!). Wild ginger grows in rich mesic forests with lots of shade. Look for them in sugar maple-basswood-red oak forests, such as those in Nerstrand Big Woods State Park or on north-facing slopes in Frontenac State Park. They are easy to grow in shade gardens and are readily available from many native landscaping shops. Here is a link to the University of Wisconsin herbarium website page that has great pictures of this lovely plant.

The compost hunt is on

The compost hunt is on. The county sites are stocked, but will go quick. Community gardens are jostling for a complimentary delivery. Residents all over are looking at their woeful soils thinking, "I need some compost". Yes you do!

This is a perfect segue to highlight the compost bin sale that is happening now. Its also a great opportunity to reveal that the Hamline Midway Environment Group is hot on composting too, so much so they are working on a compost Google map much like the original community compost map of Philadelphia.

In this vein, I want to share a post written by Kirsten Saylor of Gardening Matters. It appears they have noticed the compost cries too.

"It's the time of year (spring), when folks start asking us about how to get some compost for their garden. This question comes up every year on the listserve. I recommend people checking out the COMGAR archives (search on keyword "compost") for additional advice and insight, but basically here's my quick recommendation...

If you're a community garden in Minneapolis or Ramsey County, there's instructions for compost on www.gardeningmatters.org. If you're a community garden not within Minneapolis and Ramsey County, then contact your city or county to see if they have any resources or policies about providing free or deeply discounted compost to community gardens.

If you're private/home garden, then here are some options for you...
1) ask neighbors if they have more compost than they can use. You may be surprised.
2) www.yardstogardens.org just advertised that they are trying to help people with surplus compost connect with those that need it.
3) make your own -- worms or a bin out back -- and I don't mean to be flippant, gardeners need to be on the vanguard of keeping valuable nutrients in their "ecosystem" and not letting any of that good compostable stuff get away and stuck in a landfill or burned for energy. If not gardeners, then who will?"

Happy Planting! Kirsten

Occurring now are two notable trends nationwide - 1) a rabid and valuable desire to grow-your-own food which requires good soil, and 2) a needy trash system which is overburdened with food waste. Compost intersects both of of these trends, each satisfying the other.

Friends of Horton Park gearing up to get back into the native plants

Friends of Horton Park are excited to get back into the garden in 2010 season! The group is participating in the St. Paul Park Annual Spring Clean-up on Sat. April 10th. Please join us at 9:00 am at Horton for spring greetings, light raking of the gardens, trimming of old stems and trash pick-up. We may get some sightings of our first spring flowers? Bring a buddy and any raking supplies if you have them (otherwise provided).

Be a native plant enthusiast while enjoying the greater Horton Park with fellow Hamline Midway neighbors. Gardening sessions are typically monthly on Sunday's at noon until 2pm. Garden website is http://groups.google.com/group/hortonpark. FFI, or to get on this community garden's list contact hortonpark@gmail.com.

Community Garden Spring Resource Fair on Sat., March 27

This year's line-up is shaping up to be one of the most exciting Resource Fairs to date. Ashley Atkinson from Greening of Detroit is coming! She is a very respected community organizer, with expertise in community gardening and urban agriculture. Ashley will share her story and experiences in the keynote speech kicking off the Fair, and then presenting at two workshops later in the day.

Ashley is part of a collaborative that has created an inspiring real-life example of how to enhance neighborhood-based food production and make our communities more resilient and our community gardens more sustainable. Detroit's Cluster Networks have inspired Twin Cities community gardeners to think about a metro area where there is strong support for gardening at the neighborhood level-

* where community gardens are at the core of this community-based food system...
* where flower gardens are crucial to the livability of our communities and food production system -- we're all in it together!
* where neighbors are creating an infrastructure and network so that everyone interested in participating in a community food system can do so...
* where there is ongoing support and learning to improve how we garden for the yummiest yields while improving the health of environment at the same time.

But that's not all -- strong workshops, diverse exhibitors -- learn about what's happening in Minneapolis and St. Paul are enhancing local foods, hear what Extension is up to and pick up a Urban Soils Guide.

You can download and print the flyer at www.gardeningmatters.org//Events/2010Fair/SRF2010.pdf


The Sixth Annual Community Garden Spring Resource Fair
Saturday March 27th, 2010
9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Sabathani Community Center, 310 East 38th St, Minneapolis
Free Parking $5 Suggested Donation at Door

Keynote Ashley Atkinson, Director of Project Development and Urban Agriculture, The Greening of Detroit: How Detroit Works Together to Strengthen Neighborhood-Based Food Production. Twelve workshops, activities for the kids, and engaging educational displays throughout the day! Details and directions at this page or call Gardening Matters at 612-492-8964.